Getting The Ducks In A Row

        I went to a Dreamweaver class today and got blown away. Because the instructor knew the software and how to teach it.

       I had taken one class before and the guy had limped through the class - with the assumption that we were all senior people therefore, we could read and understand and second guess the documentation.

       There's a problem with that assumption.

       You see, people that are senior are usually too busy to read documentation - they need to be force-fed at a high rate of speed because they are trying to cut time from the learning curve.

       It works this way.

       Anyone can read through the documentation - I have written enough of it to know. It takes time and energy and about 6 weeks to study and try out and master a complex program. If you sit in a classroom with a good instructor, you can cut that curve to 1 week. That's 2-3 days of class and two days of experimentation. You aren't a master - but you are well on the way to being one. The help pages and the manuals pick up the slack because you add to what you know as you need to know it. This applies to design tools, programming, and web-creation products.

       This page is being created with a template. My first use of one and albeit a simple one, it leads the way for a more complex one to be designed for Troy's website. I picked this up in 1 hour after poking around for a week to no success. Hands on demonstration and exercise and there it was, clear as glass. (I had mastered the templates in other software before - Word, PageMaker, NetObjects Fusion - so I wasn't having trouble with the concept.)

    The difference between learning from someone who knows what they are doing and from being annoyed by someone who doesn't.   

      I know these rules. I am one of those instructors who master their topic and set up the class so you don't leave without success at running the labs and solving the demonstration problem. My forte is structured design flow- netlist to wafer verification. I aslo coach presenters. An attempt not often welcomed by those students because they don't want to be presenters.

       Student motivation helps. It is, in fact, the other key. Timing and motivation - learning what you need to know when you want to know it.    

        So here comes the next wave of new learning - what they have been trying to get to us with since the 1960s. Computer Assisted Instruction. Only now, it's Web-Based Training. And it comes in many forms. From presentations just thrown on-line. PowerPoint because the dumbing down of America requires that everyone use PowerPoint even though we all know it is a horrible program. Adobe threw in the towel on Adobe Persuation - a far, far superior program. After all, coorporate America said PowerPoint came with the machine, why pay money for a better program? Why indeed.     

       Adobe PDF remains the better way to get the presentaiton there with lower bandwidth. You need Adobe Distiller to do this right. Gould's Astound is still around people - a good half-step to Director. Director is over-kill for training - it has a niche as the CD Games software champion.

       Another gropup of companies are trying audio-video - they take the presentation, add a running transcript (which can be translated into other than English), stick in a talking head (boring) or a static photo (boring), add sync'd audio, and stick it on the web. This is also static.

       Both of these techniques require that the animation of PowerPoint, such as it is, be deleated.

       So there we have all kinds of static information flow. Wait a minute. This is back to reading! No! No! No!

       The web is not static. The web allows JavaScript and pop-up windows and rollovers and object-oriented activities that can measure successful understanding. The web allows main-lining and remedial branching - all those things we studied in the 60s. And the web allows measurment of objectives. Also a well-documented necessity - see if you got it. In incremental steps. Unit. Modules. Pages.

       The web allows tracking (who took what and how did they do), incremental training (take what you need when), billing (it is saleable), and interactivity. The possibilities are endless. E-mail allows communication.

       Now the problem is matching the material and the medium - and a whole new line of businesses. Digital Think (a company) - DreamWeaver Attain (now remaned Courseware) (software) - high-level Authorware ($$$$ andsoftware with a high learning curve). A whole new set of software tools. A whole new web-based industry. Watch the stocks. Watch the IPOs. Here they come.

       It's why I was taking the class. After studying all this in the early 1970s, as part of a PhD in Engineering I did not finish a Thesis for (I did the one in Computer Science instead), I have now come full-circle. I will now master the new tools and merge the older theory and change how we teach technology.

       Which brings us to the one fact that needs to remain with us. Only the best instructors should develop the web-based instruction. It was the original goal of CAI. It is what freaked out the NTA in the 1960s. Put the best material on-line. Then even inadequate teachers have good material to give to students. Levels the playing field. Makes the grade schools and the high schools and the colleges equal regardless of their location.

     Racing into the future.

     It only took 30 years.